Brainshark’s 10 Million Views in 2010: Conversation with Joe Gustafson

Joe Gustafson is the CEO and founder of Brainshark, Inc., whose cloud-based software enables users to create, share and track online and mobile video presentations. Under his leadership, Brainshark has helped thousands of companies improve the reach and results of their business communications, while dramatically reducing communications costs.

Geetesh: With Brainshark presentations topping 10 million views from users in every part of the world in 2010, how proud does it make you feel to have accomplished that? How motivating is it for the year 2011?

Joe: Thanks, Geetesh. We’re thrilled with the viewing activity and with the great results our customers are seeing as they use Brainshark to improve their business communications. You know, at the beginning of last year, we announced that Brainshark presentations had surpassed 25 million views – and that was in a 10-year timeframe. So, to now be able to say that Brainshark presentations were viewed more than 10 million times last year alone is a big accomplishment for us and our users. It speaks to the increasing value that our users are getting from online presentations and makes us optimistic for the year ahead.

This year, we’re already seeing that companies are increasingly focused on mobile initiatives – delivering information to their audiences that can be consumed easily, on multiple screens and at their convenience. Through our recent iPhone and iPad app and other mobile offerings, we’re in a great position to help. With one Brainshark presentation already viewed every 2.5 seconds – and 205 years’ worth of Brainshark content consumed last year – this year, we’re looking forward to continuing to help users provide timely, high-impact content that can be viewed on any device.

Geetesh: What are the factors that have driven this impressive growth for Brainshark? Also how are your viewers spread out – are there more enterprise users in accordance with Brainshark’s positioning, or do you also see significant growth in the non-enterprise user base too?

Joe: Companies are finding it increasingly valuable to make their content accessible 24/7, from any device. Driven by audience demand, they need an easy way to generate content that is timely, compelling and delivered cost-effectively – and this is Brainshark’s sweet spot. We’re at the intersection of important communications trends, and have grown, in part, by helping our customers leverage online video, social media and mobile communications to deliver powerful business messages.

Additionally, we’re seeing a lot of demand for professional services as companies look to compete globally and launch programs for their audiences everywhere. As more and more companies communicate with global audiences, we’ve had an increasing number of requests to help translate their content into multiple languages as well.

We’ve also seen demand among all the audiences you mentioned – enterprises and individuals alike. Because the companies we work with have vast amounts of viewers they need to reach – customers, prospects, partners, employees, etc. – we do see a large amount of views and activity from this enterprise user base. At the same time, our non-enterprise users are very important to us as well, and continue to increase steadily. We’re committed to providing these users with communications solutions that help them succeed – including the free myBrainshark.com product for individuals, as well as the myBrainshark Pro and Pro Trainer upgrades we announced last year. We also recently integrated myBrainshark with Google Apps and made it available on the Google Apps Marketplace. All of these solutions have contributed to growth among our individual users.

As we move forward in 2011, we’re excited by opportunities to continue to improve and innovate, and look forward to future growth by helping our users meet their communications needs.